So a man walks into
a poetry reading and tells
a joke about a fish; then he pulls out
a story about his mother
fishing for trout. She never
actually fished for trout,
or fished at all, but she did like
to look out the window at
the stream that ran behind
the house; why not, then,
give her these lines, such
a simple thing--a willow rod and
the cool early morning; a woman
stepping away from the .window,
making her way across the damp grass
to the water. She knows that
the boy has taken her place at the window;
she knows that in a little while she’ll have to
go back. But just this once
she'll walk all the way
to the stream,
as if the day were hers to spend,
dreaming, fishing, dreaming.

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